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Jim Harbaugh once spent a Big Game news conference obsessively detailing the pitfalls of “hubris.” It was an amusing tangent at the time, one that now seems a harbinger of what was ahead in his NFL coaching career.

That was in 2009, just as he burst on the scene as coaching’s Next Big Thing, with victories over Oregon and USC.

“Hubris can be a killer,” Harbaugh said back then. “The ills of hubris will sneak up on you and you don’t even know it’s sneaking up on you.”

Fourteen months later, Harbaugh made the leap to the NFL. And right now Harbaugh’s hubris (noun: exaggerated pride or self-confidence) isn’t sneaking up on anybody. He’s put it up in neon lights for the world to see.

In his second season, Harbaugh has flouted conventional wisdom, broken unwritten rules and picked fights with anyone who dares ask questions.

While his team is in the same position it was a year ago – hosting a divisional playoff game – there’s a different feel.

Mainly because of Harbaugh’s big gamble.

Win the next two games with Colin Kaepernick and get to the Super Bowl, and Harbaugh is an unconventional, risk-taking genius.

Lose this week or next – failing to advance farther than the 49ers did with Alex Smith – and Harbaugh will almost single-handedly shoulder the blame.

Fair? Maybe not. But the coach usually gets the credit or the blame. And Harbaugh’s big gamble has been the defining moment of a season marked by the coach’s apparent need to create constant intrigue and controversy. It’s almost as if he was bored by how smoothly things went in his first season and has been determined to liven it up ever since.

Abandon a highly ranked starting quarterback in the middle of a successful season? Heck, even Bill Belichick never had the nerve to do that (his flip from Drew Bledsoe to Tom Brady due to injury happened in the second game of the 2001 season and was a fait accompli by the time Bledsoe finally was healthy).

Watch your erratic kicker miss kicks for more than a month before deciding to hold a kicker competition, just days before a playoff game?

Send in a trick play backed up on your own goal line in hostile territory?

Along the way, Harbaugh has set up a series of straw men to battle against and knock over.

There was the “gobble, gobble turkey from jive turkey gobblers” quote about those who suggested Smith had lost confidence. That came just three weeks before Harbaugh benched Smith.

There was his visit to see free agent Peyton Manning in March. And his subsequent unprovoked ranting against the media – months later – for reporting on that pursuit, calling it “diabolical.”

During the season, Harbaugh has gone from playing the hot-hand at quarterback to the hotfoot at kicker, but always playing the hot Harbaugh. He has supreme confidence in all that he does.

And with good reason. After turning around two collegiate programs – one that has become a regular BCS contender – Harbaugh jumped to the NFL. In his first two seasons, he has compiled a 25-8-1 record. He has resurrected a moribund franchise. His team has earned a first-round bye in each of his first two seasons.

That first season, it all looked so easy. Harbaugh had the Midas touch. The team hit the playoffs full of momentum and solidarity.

This season, with much higher expectations and a more difficult schedule, the ride hasn’t been as smooth. It’s been a struggle every step of the way, or at least every third game.

Heading into January, the 49ers showed flaws, losing two of their final five games, giving up 73 points over a six-quarter stretch and relying on a last second Minnesota victory to secure the bye week. Despite a monumental mid-December victory in New England, the team doesn’t have the same hot vibe it had last January.

Something else has fundamentally changed within the chemistry of the team. The man who circles the wagons, who shouts out “Who’s got it better than us?” and who routinely calls any outsiders liars and fools, has discarded one of the key players he relied on for success in his first 26 NFL games.

His words sound different than they did a year ago, or even three months ago when he lauded Smith for being “as tough as a $2 steak.”

This week, Harbaugh said of his switch at quarterback, “We saw enough really good things that we wanted to have the same faith and trust in Colin that we’d shown in Alex. And it’s pretty well documented how we felt about both guys.”

However you parse what Harbaugh says, the reality is his decision was an enormous, hubris-filled gamble.

And we’ll find out, beginning Saturday, if it pays off. Or if the ills are lurking.